Global Agenda: Has democracy failed?

Now that there is no money for pensions and health tomorrow, nor even for make-believe jobs today, how is the public likely to react?

Greek protests June 2011 311 R.
(photo credit:REUTERS)

The clucking and flapping sounds you hear from afar are being made by large
numbers of chickens coming home to roost. This metaphor is an extraordinarily
apt description of the processes under way in the economies, societies and hence
political systems of most developed countries. As we stand on the brink of
massive political change in Europe, beginning this Sunday, it is critical to
understand why so many citizen voters are so enraged and what is impelling them
to throw out whomever is in office, irrespective of party
affiliation.

For example, Spain held elections late last year, after the
government collapsed under the weight of the crisis, and Spanish voters replaced
the center-left government with one from the center-right. French voters,
however, are now poised to replace the center-right incumbent in the Elysee
Palace with a new president from the center-left. So the common theme is clearly
to “throw the rascals out,” irrespective of who they are and what ideas or
ideology they claim to represent.

But as discussed in last week’s column,
these swings are the more positive aspect of the current slew of European
elections.

In most countries, the biggest swing in voting patterns is not
within the center of the spectrum, whether from right to left or vice versa, but
from the center outward, to the more extreme parties on both flanks.

Not
surprisingly, this trend will be strongly evident in Greece, the country that
has been at the epicenter of the European sovereign-debt crisis and has suffered
the longest from austerity-driven recession. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that
it was the previous Greek election in September 2009 that blew the lid off
Europe; the center-left government that won power in that election discovered
that its predecessor had cooked the national books and that the country’s fiscal
deficit and general situation was actually far worse than had been admitted and
reported to Brussels.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Greek voters
are not enamored with either of the main parties. But Greek politics has
deteriorated far beyond the unpleasant situation of having to choose between
lousy alternatives. The country currently has a prime minister who was imposed
on it by the European Union, who therefore represents the EU and whose main
function is to do the EU’s bidding by implementing extremely tough measures on
Greece and thereby prop up the crumbling pretense that Greece can remain in the
euro zone and its economy can recover, somehow, sometime.

The Italians,
too, have had a prime minister imposed on them; he, too, is a former central
banker and, before that, worked for Goldman Sachs. He represents the Italian
people about as much as does the Vietnamese ambassador to Rome. He may be doing
things that are good for Italy – that’s a matter of opinion – but if he is, it’s
not because they are good for Italy.

What has happened and is happening
in Greece and Italy is not merely a local drama, but rather a Europewide
phenomenon that bespeaks of a fundamental crisis not merely in the financial
markets, or even in the macro-economy of this or that country, but of the entire
democratic system and structure of government across Europe. Governments in
almost all the countries and of every persuasion engaged for decades in telling
voters things that were untrue and promising things that were impossible to
deliver.

Greece is the extreme example of this process: a country that
produces very little that is globally competitive, that operates an enormous
public sector in which jobs are awarded through party patronage or family
connections, and in which many people retire in their fifties to live out their
remaining decades on comfortable pensions. A country like that is doomed to go
bankrupt as soon as the sources of funding for its corrupt structure come under
pressure.

It is an interesting exercise to consider who, within this
system, is more morally culpable and intellectually reprehensible: the
politicians who created it and sold it to the voters, or the voters who believed
the promises, gratefully accepted the free lunches and assumed that they could
and would live out their lives in la-la-land, while some fool paid the
bills.

But that has no practical value. Now that the flocks of chickens
have come home to roost and it is revealed – to general consternation and horror
– that there is no money for pensions and health tomorrow, nor even for
make-believe jobs today, how is the public likely to react? Will it: a) blame
itself for being stupid, gullible and self-destructive, or b) blame the
politicians for telling it lies and placing the country in dire straits? Anyone
choosing a) is living in an alternative universe.

Unfortunately, it is
not a specific leader, or party or country that created the disaster, but rather
the entire system, with hardly a single leader or party blameless. That is what
makes the distraught European public such easy prey for the simplistic slogans
and seemingly simple solutions of the demagogues and extremists who inevitably
crawl out of the rotten woodwork at this stage of the crisis. In light of what
has happened, it is almost inevitable that the failures of the democratic
parties in Europe will be portrayed as the failure of democracy itself – and
few, if any, democratic politicians have the credibility to convincingly rebut
that claim.